Hi all,
I recently released my first shareware game. While I didn't go in completely blind, I've been learning a lot of things since it's been out. Someone recently pointed me here after seeing a screenshot of the game on flipcode.com. I thank him (and everyone who runs this site) for it, there's a lot of great info here.

Anyway, a couple of things...
First, I'd really appreciate any feedback I could get from more experienced shareware developers. My game site is:
http://www.evertt.com
You can download the demo from there. I'd really like feedback on the web site, the game, and really anything in between.

Second, I'd really like to get some reviews on the game sites. I don't really have many ideas of how do that. One reviewer mailed me out of the blue, so I've been talking to him. I also sent in little press kits to about five of the gaming magazines. Are there other ways? I would think finding their e-mails and mailing them directly would be kind of rude, but maybe they are used to that and are ok with it.

Thanks for any suggestions you can give me.
Jeff Evertt

The installation was good, though I kind of have a pet peeve about games that don't give me the option to RUN the game after the install.

I ran your display program first, but as everything looked okay I didn't save. Then I ran the game. Crashed. Didn't even try to load. I tried it again, and this time it was fine.

My first impression was very good. It seems to run at a high resolution with nice lighting and textures (for a <4MB shareware game). It looks nice. Very professional.

The first level was fun though I made the obvious comparison to "Super Monkey Ball" which uses a very similar gameplay mechanism. Then I went back to the Main Menu and was impressed by the large number of game modes you offer.

I can't remember which mode I picked ("Advanced" something, I think), but this second level didn't impress me. I tilted too much and the ball rolled into a hole. That was fine, but another ball dropped down immediately and, because my screen was still tilted from the first ball, the new one rolled right off the edge. In fact, I think I lost several balls this way before I got the world level again. On the plus side, it didn't seem to "count" these balls against me, but it was still very frustrating. The overhead angle on this level didn't seem to work very well. It was hard to tell where the angled slopes were.

I decided to finish checking the game out later, so I pressed ALT + F4 to exit. HOLY SMOKES WAS THAT A MISTAKE. It immediately dumped me back to the desktop and I was in 320 x 200 resolution! When I finally got the resolution back to normal I discovered that my task bar was messed up. (Possibly something I did, trying to get my screen back to normal.) It took me 15 minutes to get everything working normally again.

I've been having some strange problems with this computer recently, so it's possible that these problems were NOT caused by your game, but please make sure you are resetting things following an ALT + F4.

It seems to be an impressive first effort. I'll try to check it out later and get back to you with more comments.

Hi,

I also tried your game, and enjoy the amount of variety you offer, but still got bored quickly. I guess it's not just the type of game I play. Though it also made me think of super monkey ball, and
retro64's game Best Friends (Which I liked the demo allot).

I think my favorite game was protecting the little guy running on the bottom of the screen.

I seem to have gotten the same problem JC got when I exited the game. I didn't alt F4, but I simply quit out. Windows and the game did not refresh my screen. It stayed blue and my background image wouldn't show up.

It also could just be my machine. I need a format.

As for finding websites to submit the game, there are a big list of sites listed on www.asp-shareware.com. You should try those sites.

Good luck with your game.

John

Well... A lot of big game sites will *not* review shareware games of indie titles no matter what you do. They have that set as an editorial policy and they aren't likely to break it. I believe Adrenaline Vault is an example of that. Those sorts of policies vary from mag to mag though and even a site like avault which doesn't typically publish reviews of indie titles sometimes puts out a "best of shareware" article and does 10 in a batch, so it doesn't hurt to submit your game to them anyway.

That being said there are many sites that will do reviews of indie/shareware games. GoneGold is one example. There are also sites that specialize in indie/shareware games like www.diygames.com, www.gametunnel.com, and www.sharewaregaming.com

I think the best approach if you want to maximize the number of reviews is to prepare a press release. Try to think of this from the perspective that you're a busy magazine editor and you get an email. That is... be succinct, clear, and only include the relevant information that a magazine might want to print, with links for extra information should they want to dig deeper. Usually I think you'd have a brief description, a link to some screenshots, some details about purchasing/pricing, and a link to a free copy for the magazine in question with maybe an additional disclaimer stating that you're willing to send a cd if it's requested. Below that you can include the text to a good review for your game. The benefit of this is that many reviewers/editors are busy and they need to get an issue out, so if they get a press release that has stuff they can cut and paste to fill in the mag in directly they will grab the text right off your page verbatim. (note. Include this text as your description of the game that can be reprinted. Don't say something like "here's a review to print" as that will likely not be well received. Just give them something they can easily work with when putting together their magazine.)

Then you can send the press release out through a press release service like DP-Directory. Some press release services will do mostly print mags so you may do a seperate press release to onlnie magazines yourself. Hit as many sites as you can. At the end of the day you may only end up with a print article and a couple of reviews, but the right mention in the right place can mean big sales even if it's just a single small blurb. Imagine getting mentioned in the new york times for instance. There are so many readers that even if you're on page 53 in some "Tech goodies" 1/8 of page column you're still guaranteed a lot of hits.

Lastly if you're not comfortable writing a good press release you can hire someone to do it for you. Al Harberg at Dp Directory offers that service as well but it tends to get a lot more expensive.

Good Luck.

Jeff, by the looks of it you've got an excellent and original game there and I hope it does very well indeed! I particularly liked Defender, which is a whole new original game all by itself. (At least, I've not seen anything like it personally in the last 30 years). I expect your sales will be sl-o-o-o-w for a couple of years whilst general system specs catch up with you though.

I found myself playing it all the way through before I realised I'd wasted 30 minutes, and that's a great sign. Unfortunately I can't buy it because I've vowed not to buy any games until I've finished my own ;)

I do have a few criticisms I hope you'll take into account:

1) Auto-run after installation (checkbox) please
2) Squishball is just too difficult. Reduce the required velocity by a factor of 2.
3) The separate application to set up the screen mode is icky. Far better to start in a failsafe mode in the game and allow the user to select it from there.
4) I couldn't see the point of a time limit when I could just restart the level again. With nothing to lose it just became an arbitrary irritation. Perhaps you should offer a scoring system based on time instead?

Cas:)

By the way.. had a look at the game just now. It's great. Hope you sell lots.

- S

Hey Jeff, (this is Goble, btw)

I didn't encounter any of the crashes mentioned above when I ran the game (I ran windowed--on two different machines).

I played the game briefly and thought it was fun, here's a few constructive criticisms which you may find helpful. Drop me an email (goble@hipsoft.com) if you want to chat more.

* No option to run the game after install.
* Not enough information in the game to let me know why I should upgrade to full version...maybe add an "upsell screen" when you exit.
* Although the DirectX 8.1 3D stuff looks great, you are probably limiting the amount of "mass-market" users that will be able to play the game (and thus, potentially purchase the full version) by requiring Dx 8.1.
* The "Play Game" option on the main menu is in a bigger font which kinda makes it look like a menu title instead of a valid option.
* The ball felt a little sluggish (when tilting the board) when playing Balance Ball...although, maybe the game would be too easy if that wasn't the case?

Hope things are going well for you Jeff, good luck with the game!
-Scorpio

Originally posted by svero
Well... A lot of big game sites will *not* review shareware games of indie titles no matter what you do. They have that set as an editorial policy and they aren't likely to break it. I believe Adrenaline Vault is an example of that. Those sorts of policies vary from mag to mag though and even a site like avault which doesn't typically publish reviews of indie titles


I am sorry, but that isn't exactly correct. Adrenaline Vault published a review of Cliffski game and also the platform game of Brad Wardell.

Originally posted by johnson
I am sorry, but that isn't exactly correct. Adrenaline Vault published a review of Cliffski game and also the platform game of Brad Wardell.

Avault may do a few but they won't typically review indie titles. This was told to me by one of the main reviewers there ina seperate discussion about an article he was writing. Normally they stick to major retail releases. Thing is it never hurts to try. I've had some of my games reviewed in places that typically don't do indie titles as well.

First, thanks for all the feedback. I'll consider making some of the enhancements you guys mentioned.

I do have a press release for the game, but haven't sent it to many people. I checked out DP-Directory for getting it circulated. Has anybody used them? Has anyone had better luck doing it themselves or with someone else? I think they had the price listed at $130 for their service.

Are there other ways of getting reviewers to notice your game, or is that pretty much the best way?

Sorry for your system wigging out John. I don't want to turn this into a technical discussion. I tested on as many machines pre-release as I could find (which really wasn't all that many); all the problems were common to pretty much all full-screen DX8 apps and a driver update fixed it. Do you run other DX8 apps on that machine?

-Jeff
I didn't expect to see so many people I've previously worked with posting here :)

I've herd good things about Shareware Promotions (http://www.sharewarepromotions.com) they service a lot of shareware authors (not just games) including everyone’s favorite shareware publisher, our very own Dexterity Software ;)

<edit> oh and welcome to the forums Jeff! </edit>

I don't see anywhere on the Shareware Promotions site that mentions press releases. It looks more like they help with download site/search engine submissions.

Regarding DPDirectory, I have heard lots of good things about them. I asked Al Harberg a while back about his experience with promoting games. On his "success stories" page, there isn't much mention of success with games, so that's why I was curious. His response was basically that the biggest benefit of using his service was that he has a HUGE list of general purpose press contacts. Things like local newspapers, family/mens/womens/kids magazine editors, etc. For developers of general interest and family oriented games (as opposed to violent games and stuff like that) this could be quite helpful. He said he tends not to see these articles (hence the reason there aren't really any listed under success stories). Now whether you get good results out of this, I'm not really sure about. One game developer indicated sometimes is works great, sometimes he gets nothing out of it. I didn't get any response from any other game developers, so I wasn't able to draw much of a conclusion from that.

Al's service is definitely not game geared. I think one should hit the general press with Al and then do a specific press release for game sites, either yourself to editors or through someone who specializes in the game market. You definitely won't be covering all bases if you only use dp-directory, but I've had good results from that just the same, so I think it's a worthwile part of your promotion.

Originally posted by svero
Al's service is definitely not game geared.

I plan on releasing two educational titles this year and I was considering using DP Directory to announce either or both of those. My plan is to release non-games this year, issuing press through DPD, and then when I do release a game title, use it as well as some other avenues.

The goal is that my "prior exposure" will have created mind share in the eyes of those who've seen the other titles released.

Does anybody have any experience (or more hopefully, success) with this cross-pollenation of marketing avenues?

-daniel